On 9/5/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think that the NPOV argument is rock-solid, it
isn't NPOV to refer
to years as AD. I remember hearing a debate a while ago that people
had on the Arabic wikipedia. I don't know if it was a big thing, or if
it was even that big of a deal, but I think it serves well to put some
perspective on why people might not like AD. The thing was that on the
Arabic wp, people tended to write PBUH in Arabic everytime a martyr or
prophet was mentioned. Incase somebody doesn't know, PBUH means Peace
be upon him. One could argue for allowing that under NPOV using
basically the same argument that's used for AD, saying that it's
"common practice" and using that convention less people will be
confused/offended /whatever.
There's a huge difference here. Use of PBUH is limited to Muslims.
Use of AD is not limited to Christians (anyone who says it is needs to
check which orifice they are speaking from).
The problem really is that making a policy here requires us to make a
decision. Yes, *us*. This is enormously different to normal article
writing, where we just report what others have said. We have to make
a decision about which is correct, yet we can't, because to do so
would be to break our principle of neutrality (though not NPOV, which
is related but different).
In short, we're stuffed.
--
Sam